BUALA

Seeing is a slow verb. A (neo)postcolonial essay on time, gaze, and discomfort.

Cléo Diára signs a historic role here. Not as a token of diversity on a European poster, but because she carries in her the contradiction of her POV, never throwing it back at the viewer as pedagogy. She’s simply magnetic, sensitive, at times insolent, provocative; or as a NYFF text puts it, she “mixes strength, sensuality, and vulnerability” and stands out as the film’s emotional backbone. It’s no surprise she won the Best Actress Award in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, a gesture of resonance for a Capeverdean-Portuguese actress working in a circuit where legitimacy is still a bareknuckle spar. Those New York critics went further: a “fierce” and “star-making” role. All true.

Afroscreen

26.10.2025 | by Pedro José-Marcellino aka P.J. Marcellino